I’m currently reading Chris Bailey’s book Hyperfocus: How to manage your attention in a world of distraction. In the book Bailey talks about “attentional space”, also known as your working memory. We have a limited amount of this at one time, which means that there is a limit to what we can give our attention to.
Just how many things we can give our attention to depends on what they are. For example, I can easily wash dishes and listen in on the baseball game on the TV in the living room, while using my foot to scratch an itch on the opposite leg. If, however, I’m trying to have a conversation with my wife, where I’m really listening to her, I’d have to stop doing those things, except for scratching my leg. This is why it’s not safe to drive and text. It’s also not good to look at your phone while your spouse is talking to you. The first can get you killed while the second might eventually lead to divorce.
During the past few days I’ve experienced some good examples of this. I gave a talk in Kananaskas, Alberta on Monday morning so I got there Sunday afternoon. I went for a walk and enjoyed the view of the snow on the mountain tops and some on the trees around the hotel. While I did snap some pictures, I didn’t do anything else with my phone for two reasons. One, I was relishing the peacefulness of it all and two, the path was icy and I wanted to stay upright so I paid careful attention to how and where I walked.
Monday morning I looked out the window on my way back from the hotel gym and saw that a lot of snow had fallen and the wind was blowing it all around. Some dread set it for me because I needed to drive to Calgary after lunch. My talk went well, I ate lunch, grabbed my luggage and hit the road. I didn’t even turn on the radio until I had made my way down the mountain. While the speed limit on that road is posted at 90 kilometres per hour (about 55 miles per hour) I think I maxed out around 70 and that was rare. There was almost nobody on the road, which was good because the lines were covered by snow.
I made it down the mountain safely and back to the city, focused on returning my rental car and checking into my hotel. And I’ll blame that focus on staying safe for why I managed to leave my credit card at the gas station and had to take a cab back there before going to my hotel.
While I was giving my undivided attention to walking on Sunday and driving on Monday, it didn’t occur to me that I was witnessing what Bailey wrote about in this book.
“When you hyperfocus on a task, you expand one task, project, or other object of attention so it fills your attentional space completely.” Hyperfocus, pages 51-52
Hyperfocus helps to keep you safe on the road and upright while walking on an icy path, but as Bailey notes, it also makes you more productive, more engaged with your friends and family, and more likely to remember the things that matter the most.
Really, it’s very much like having a very good mindfulness session where you’re focused entirely on your breath, or a bell, or sensations in your body and nothing else invades that space or if it does, it leaves without causing any problems. Meditation and other mindfulness practices have show to also make you more engaged and improve your memory and productivity. In fact, in the section of the book related to increasing your attentional space Chris wrote about how meditation can help to do so.
Now I’m off to focus on some other work that needs my attention. Drive safely and watch out for those icy patches.
